Let Sambo have his N14bn palace

It was such bad news when on December 6, the Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) rejected plans by the FCT Administration to spend an additional N9billion to provide infrastructure at the residence of the Vice-President. Then the newspapers went to town the next day with sensational headlines, depicting our country as a poor one which could not afford to splash a mere N14billion on the official residence of its Number Two citizen. The project was awarded in 2009 at a cost of N7billion. The Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) initially wanted N9billion more, but had to scale it down to N6billion plus, perhaps after the intervention of the Bureau for Public Procurement.

For once, I was compelled to agree with our Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, that it is the media that should be blamed for projecting the country in bad light, thus influencing outsiders’ perception of what is happening in the country. Instead of descending on the senators who want our vice president to live in some ramshackle house, the media started faulting the additional funds requested for the laudable project. What a pity!

Now, when an important decision is about to be taken on an equally important personality like the country’s Number Two citizen, one expects those taking the decision to advance impeccable reasons why theyson advanced by the Senate committee? Senator Smart Adeyemi who led members of the committee to the project site said the amount was huge, considering the abject poverty in the land. “The National Assembly is not going to appropriate additional N9bn for the project, especially at a period in this country when people cannot get a square meal. The N9bn is far more than the original cost of the project”. We cannot blame Smart for having such a low esteem of our vice president. He is from Kogi State where tailor, carpenter and some pilot once held sway as governor. So, this parochial mindset must have influenced his decision.

Smart is talking as if he is just back from Germany or the US, or wherever. Who in Nigeria does not know that contract variations have become part and parcel of us and we hardly review contract cost down here? Again, imagine a ‘learned’ legislator like Smart talking about people not able to ‘get a square meal’ and the abject poverty in the land. He should tell us when last a government provided Nigerians that square meal a day. I left the university in the mid-‘80s and I know that people had been going on all kinds of methods to reduce their food bills, even since then. We had ‘0-1-1’ and ‘1-0-1’ (the first meaning minus breakfast, plus lunch and dinner; and the second: plus breakfast minus lunch, plus dinner). This is the way it has been at least since the ‘80s. Whereas before then, parents had enough to give their children and they were always confident to ask the children if they were satisfied. These days, most parents merely ask whether the children have eaten. They would have taken off before the children start complaining that the food is not enough!

Again, Smart talked about ‘abject poverty’, is he pretending not to know that is what governments have been spreading in the country for the past few decades? And they are now talking as if it is the fault of the vice president that there is abject poverty in the land. I guess that people like Smart are advancing all these reasons because President Goodluck Jonathan and his team are largely democrats with human kindness flowing in their veins. Imagine if it had been in the Second Republic, Smart and his colleagues would have been put where they belong by some outspoken public officials who would have asked them whether they have seen any Nigerian eat from the dustbin yet. It was the then President Shehu Shagari who was quiet; but he had ministers and other subordinates that were garrulous. As a matter of fact, one of them was so loathed that they organised for him to be ‘crated’ home from Britain, but for some eagle-eyed British police who aborted the plan.

The senators ignored all the explanations of the executive secretary of the FCDA, Adamu Ismail, who tried all he could to make the senators see sense in the idea. The man said the place needed furniture, fencing, two protocol guest louses, a banquet hall and security gadgets. According to Ismail, these were omitted by those who conceived the project. Now, tell me, which of these is our vice president not entitled to? Is it the furniture that you want to disagree with? Or you want to say the man should not be protected with a fence as thick and strong as the wall of Jericho in these days of high profile kidnappings and bombings? Are two protocol guest houses too many for the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? Are the senators also saying the banquet hall is unnecessary? We should realise that those who prepared the initial estimate are human beings likely to forget that these items were not included in the original project. Or, they must be some other Smarts who believe in Spartan lifestyle for our vice president!

In view of all these points, we should show understanding for why the supplementary budget for the project is higher than the original estimate. All these items could not have been provided with the initial N7billion! Moreover, what if technologies have changed between when the contract was awarded and now; would we want our vice president’s palace to be fitted with yesterday’s technology, today?

Now that the Senate committee has made Ismail look incompetent, how will another FCDA official come again next year to ask for another variation, this time including the cost of transporting all the needed items to site? And the cost of painting, electrical fittings, bottled water and champagne and stuff like that? And what of the cost of the cassava bread that the vice president will eat? And the exotic fura de nunu to wash it down?

These are what Smart sat in judgment over and declared, rather off-handedly, that “Fourteen billion Naira to me is huge for the Vice-President’s house. If you are even talking of N10bn, that would be understandable …”. When has the simple question of budgeting suddenly become this rigorous in the country? Have Smart and Co. forgotten that here, we don’t simply spend, we sink money into projects? How come we find it difficult to sink a mere N14billion into our vice president’s lodge? Since when has that paradigm changed? These senators should come off it! They should not infect our vice president with their poverty-stricken mindset. In case the senators do not know, some of our leaders are like my friend who always reminds us that he had been taking Irish Cream since he was in his mother’s womb; whenever we tease him that he has a poor man’s mentality. We should appreciate our leaders’ sacrifices by at least spoiling them a little.

The reasonable thing that Senator Smart should have done was to have asked Ismail to ‘take a bow and leave’! All hope is however not lost. Thanks to the empathetic vice-chairman of the committee, Senator Domingo Obende, who urged the officials to submit the details of the additional scope of work for which the fund was required to the committee for scrutiny. Scrutiny? Don’t start smelling any rat. And never ask what the senators have been doing since.